Tejas Gawande
@tejas
Co-founder, Chronicle. Product geek.
Tejas Gawande
twitter.com
We tend to worship inventors and originators, designers who were trailblazing and innovative. And we copy them.
This oxymoron of a craft can drive a person crazy. There’s lots of space between originality and industry, authorship and acknowledgement, riffing and ripping. I wrote this very short book to explore that space.
Some people have been frus... See more
This oxymoron of a craft can drive a person crazy. There’s lots of space between originality and industry, authorship and acknowledgement, riffing and ripping. I wrote this very short book to explore that space.
Some people have been frus... See more
Copying is the way design works
Great artists steal
Obsession > Talent
Taste requires focus
Exceptional people grow up in exceptional milieus
This seems to be true for >95 percent of the people I looked at.
These naked apes, the humans, are intensely social animals. They obsessively internalize values, ideas, skills, and desires from the people who surround them. It is therefore not surprising that those who grow up to be exception... See more
This seems to be true for >95 percent of the people I looked at.
These naked apes, the humans, are intensely social animals. They obsessively internalize values, ideas, skills, and desires from the people who surround them. It is therefore not surprising that those who grow up to be exception... See more
Henrik Karlsson • Childhoods of Exceptional People
The adults had high expectations of the children; they assumed they had the capacity to understand complex topics, and therefore invited them into serious conversations and meaningful work, believing them capable of growing competent rapidly.
- I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people
Henrik Karlsson • Everything That Turned Out Well in My Life Followed the Same Design Process
Recipe for doing the work you like
People who read widely and attentively—and then publish the results of their reading—are also arguably performing research as a leisure activity. Maria Popova, who started writing a blog in 2006—now called The Marginalian —which collects her reading across literature, philosophy, psychology, the sciences. Her blog feels like leisurely research, to ... See more
Celine Nguyen • research as leisure activity
Building thoughts and ideas over decades
In a pre-AI world, you needed to define the rules of the game you were playing—to think from first principles and apply them to your circumstances. In a post-AI world, you need to build and use models that recognize underlying patterns—patterns that can’t be reduced to simple rules.
Consider building software. Pre-AI, you needed to define exactly wh... See more
Consider building software. Pre-AI, you needed to define exactly wh... See more
Dan Shipper • Five New Thinking Styles for Working With Thinking Machines
Rules vs. patterns
Ideas in your zone of genius
“Strategy salons” or “nerd clubs” can be powerful tools for generating ideas and fostering innovation. Use your nerd club as a safe space to explore half-formed ideas. Limit it to a few engaged individuals who genuinely want to participate. Set ground rules for discussions, like using “yes, and” to build on ideas and leaving negative feedback aside... See more
Lenny Rachitsky • Thinking like a gardener not a builder, organizing teams like slime mold, the adjacent possible, and other unconve…
Nerd club as a safe space to explore half-formed ideas